A new two-volume report finds that proposed climate intervention technologies are not ready for wide-scale deployment and are no substitute for reductions in carbon dioxide emissions and adaptation efforts to combat climate change. Learn more at a February 26 webinar.

A new report from the National Research Council calls for a strategic national vision for reducing risk from coastal storms and flooding, the cost of which has risen dramatically over the past several decades as more people and property are in harm’s way. Currently, the nation is reactive rather than proactive, with most federal funds being used for storm response recovery, and not enough being spent on consequence reduction strategies. Learn more in this video featuring the chair of the report’s authoring committee.

A new report from the National Research Council calls for a strategic national vision for reducing risk from coastal storms and flooding, the cost of which has risen dramatically over the past several decades as more people and property are in harm’s way. Learn more in this Report in Brief, slideshow, and a new video.

“Climate Change: Evidence & Causes,” the new booklet from the US National Academy of Sciences and The Royal Society, is now available for sale from the National Academies Press. The booklets are being sold in sets of five for only $5.00 per 5-copy set, plus shipping and handling.

This new report summarizes a workshop held in October 2013 that explored how to sustainably increase the world’s population to 10 billion while simultaneously increasing people’s well-being and standard of living.

The Center for Engineering, Ethics, and Society at the National Academy of Engineering summed up three workshops in a new publication, The Climate Change Educational Partnership. The workshops explored the varied social and technical dimensions found in the relationships among climate, engineered systems, and society.

Climate intervention is no substitute for reductions in carbon dioxide emissions and adaptation efforts aimed at reducing the negative consequences of climate change. However, as our planet enters a period of changing climate never before experienced in recorded human history, interest is growing in the potential for deliberate intervention in the climate system to counter climate change. This study assesses the potential impacts, benefits, and costs of two different proposed classes of climate intervention: (1) carbon dioxide removal and (2) albedo modification (reflecting sunlight). Carbon dioxide removal strategies address a key driver of climate change, but research is needed to fully assess if any of these technologies could be appropriate for large-scale deployment. Albedo modification strategies could rapidly cool the planet’s surface but pose envi­ronmental and other risks that are not well understood and therefore should not be deployed at climate-altering scales; more research is needed to determine if albedo modification approaches could be viable in the future.